I just got back from LegalWeek 2024 in New York City. LegalWeek is the annual legal tech conference put on by ALM and directed at big law firms and clients. There were lots of exhibitors, lots of parties, and fancy dinners. It’s glitzy and sales and marketing oriented.
This year, as expected, the educational sessions, discussions, and marketing were dominated by generative AI. There were ample predictions about how it will transform the legal profession. The standard refrain was that Gen AI will enable lawyers to spend more time on high level thinking.
Gen AI, like ordinary AI, needs to be focused on what problems it can solve
Many of the pitches were aimed at showing how the vendors had adopted their own Gen AI. Many vendors did little more than tout the enormous (and often ill defined) upside of Gen AI. Many speakers droned on about how Gen Ai would revolutionize the legal world like never before. But just like I saw at CES, there were some vendors and attendees who were beginning to see that Gen AI, like ordinary AI, needs to be focused on what problems it can solve rather than convincing customers to buy Gen AI products for the sake of saying they got ’em.
As always, after the Show, I like to talk about who I saw among the vendors focused on solving problems and customer service. Recognizing a paid point and working to eradicate it by whatever means available. These will be the vendors that survive and thrive. Their products and services will be where Gen AI, like the cloud and TAR before it, goes in the future.
Who were some of these vendors with whom I visited?
Best of Show
1. ModeOne-Modeone is a relatively newcomer